Facebook is simply a platform and will never be held responsible for its users.
We can’t blame tech makers for making their products so good we want to use them. We are in control. But are we?
Facebook like all other platforms has been distorted by the fortunes they have been able to earn through advertising.
Why?
Because the techniques these companies use are not always generic: they are algorithmically tailored to each person.
There can be no ethics when it comes to technological manipulation that can be sold to the highest bidder.
The problem is that there is nothing the companies can do to address the harm unless they abandon their current advertising models. Thay have little incentive to deviate from the mantra that their companies are making the world a better place.
But how can Google and Facebook or ANY PLATFORM for that matter be forced to abandon the business models that have transformed them into the most profitable companies on the planet?
Notification technology enables hundred unsolicited interruptions into millions of lives, accelerating the arms race for people’s attention.
When you consider that the total size of all global data hit 20 zettabytes in 2017.
This probably means nothing so picture this: If every 64 – gigabyte I Phone were a brick, we could build 80 Great walls of China with the I Phones needed to store all the above data.
It’s growing every second and completely out of any control.
All of our minds are being hijacked.
Our choices are not as free as we think they are. The technologies we use have turned into compulsions, if not full-fledged addictions.
Billions of people have little choice over whether they use these now ubiquitous technologies, and are largely unaware of the invisible ways in which a small number of people in Silicon Valley are shaping their lives.
We now have an internet-shaped around the demands of an advertising economy with technology platforms contributing toward so-called “continuous partial attention.
Manipulating people into habitual use of their products or platforms with rewards or short-term social affirmations, while harvested valuable data about the preferences of users that could be sold to advertisers.
So what if anything can be done.
It is very common, for humans to develop things with the best of intentions and for them to have unintended, negative consequences.
We’ve truly reached a new level of technological time wasting, with the young generation unable to communicate.
If we the adult world cannot wean ourselves free a good starting point would be if we are to exercise our freedom by banning, iPhones, iPads, laptops and mobile phones from places of education.
They will become a real problem if you don’t, as they are ridiculous thing to be addicted to. It just something to use when you’re procrastinating or is it a procrastination-trap, a slate of tools destined to get you addicted.
We have to learn to deal more effectively with our emotions if we want to procrastinate less.
Such as varying the rewards people receive to create a craving, or exploiting negative emotions that can act as triggers. It makes them look like they have a life.
Social media and other addictive technologies have and are creating an attention economy, which is severely limiting people’s ability to focus, and is possibly lowering IQ.
One reason I think it is particularly important for us to talk about this now is that we may be the last generation that can remember life before the Internet.
Drawing a straight line between addiction to social media and political earthquakes like Brexit and the rise of Donald Trump, digital forces have completely upended the political system and, left unchecked, could even render democracy as we know it obsolete.
The mere presence of smartphones damages cognitive capacity – even when the device is turned off. Everyone is distracted, all of the time.
Feelings of boredom, loneliness, frustration, confusion, and indecisiveness often instigate a slight pain or irritation and prompt an almost instantaneous and often mindless action to quell the negative sensation by looking at your I Phone, I Pad
If the people who built these technologies are taking such radical steps to wean themselves free, can the rest of us reasonably be expected to
”Chrome extension, called DF YouTube, “which scrubs out a lot of those external triggers” an app called Pocket Points that “rewards you for staying off your phone when you need to focus”
Get a life and use one.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks chucked in the bin.
I AM SURE THERE IS NO NEED HERE FOR ME TO REMIND YOU THAT TECHNOLOGY IS NOT ONLY CHANGING THE WAY WE CONDUCT OUR LIVES BUT THE WAY WE WILL EXIST IN THE FUTURE.
There is a wonderful aspiration by the writer Isaac Asimov introduced in 1942:
A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm; a robot must obey the orders given it by human beings, except when such orders would conflict with the previous law; and a robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the previous two laws.
I call the above an aspiration because as we all know that this will never happen.
We now have AI learning from AI, engage in cyberbullying, stock manipulation or terrorist threats. We also have AI surveillance, both private and public collecting data with or without permission.
A.I. systems don’t just produce fake tweets; they also produce fake news videos.
What, exactly, constitutes harm when it comes to A.I.? No one knows.
AI systems, are already no longer limited to a single set of tasks.
On the other hand, we need AI to tackle world future problems, such as climate change, threats from space, immigration, and sustainability itself.
There is no argument that regulation of what I call essential AI should be avoided.
However, my A.I. for profit or exploitation did it should not excuse illegal behavior.
A.I. system must clearly disclose that it is not human. As we have seen in the case of bots — computer programs that can engage in increasingly sophisticated dialogue with real people — society needs assurances that A.I. systems are clearly labeled as such.
We must ensure that people know when a bot is impersonating someone.
We must ensure that A.I. system cannot retain or disclose confidential information without explicit approval from the source of that information. Because of their exceptional ability to automatically elicit, record and analyze information, A.I. systems are in a prime position to acquire confidential information.
We must ensure that an A.I. system must be subject to the full gamut of laws that apply to its human operator. This rule would cover private, corporate and government systems.
Unfortunately none of the above is possible.
This is why I favor ( In the interest of caution) that we establish A World Technological Strong Room, just like the World seed bank where all software programmes are held and available to everyone.
Of course, it would be totally naive to think that all AI should be subject to scrutiny.
It’s not military nor intelligence AI that I am talking about, it is AI that is created for exploitation for profit.
Rather than regulating what AI systems can and can’t do that make it more expensive to develop AIs the strong room would hold the founding programme.
Because Artificial intelligence systems are now learning from each other and have the potential to change how humans do just about everything. We must ensure all AI has an impregnable “off switch.”
How can this achieve? and by whom.
This is where I am open to suggestions.
It could be A United Nations Cloud Strongroom, run by a world people algorithm that copies all existing software and Algorithms.
Companies making and selling AI software will need to be held responsible for potential harm caused by “unreasonable practices” Any sufficiently transformative technology is going to require new laws and New legislation that isn’t imminent.
I have posted on this subject before with little reaction.
There is often an implicit connection between discourses of the future and notions of technology, so that if we see a television programme with a title such as Click or Tomorrow’s World we expect that the topic will be technology.
The single most astonishing point about technologies is that they can move from being emblematic of an almost unreachable future to becoming so taken for granted that it feels like a personal slight when they do not work.
In this way technology in and of itself becomes a symbol of being modern is one of the reasons it becomes expressive of, rather than distinct from, cultural values.
Perhaps this is the reason that the relationship between social media and the conceptualisation of the future is still blurred and will remain so.
New technology does not just change the manner in which people go about their everyday lives: It also facilitates our imagination of the future.
All the above speak to a new, imagined future that strives towards idealism. However within the vast field of technology the consequences of AI there are a few devices and algorithms that will battle it out over the next twenty odd years for supremacy.
Will it be Smartphones, or Smart Wearable or Cryptocurrency that will augment reality.
All need software in the form of algorithms to run.
AI algorithms will make the physical and digital world interchangeable.
Practically every non- iPhone smartphone relies on an Android operating system?
One way or the other we are entering an age where life stops giving us things and starts taking them away.
Not surprising.
So it’s not Social media technology platforms like Facebook or Twitter and the others ( that talks a lot about connectivity but not accountability) that will change the world but the power of ever where at once.
That requires total knowledge on all aspects of life.
Google or should I say the Google Cloud is trying to achieve this.
Which is possibly both the best and the worst thing that could happen.
So let’s look at a few of the top combats in the world of technology in no particular order.
( Obviously it would take page after page to give a comprehensive insight so I am only going to give a few lines to each.)
Microsoft Corporation:(LinkedIn -Skype – Mojang – Yammer- Hotmail)
It operates through the following segments:
Productivity and Business Processes, Intelligent Cloud, and More Personal Computing.
Market Cap As of May 2017
$507.5 Billion
Microsoft could be worth $1 trillion by 2020 — if not sooner. It is moving further and further into a digital landscape for everything from movies, music, books, games and software.
Twitter: Owned mostly by Venture Capitalist:
An online breaking news and social networking service. Using Twitter bots, (live streaming video.) With 450 million monthly active users it is ranked the eleventh most visited website. It has mobile apps for iPhone, iPad, Android, Windows 10, Windows Phone,BlackBerry, and Nokia S40.
Capable of influencing public opinion about culture, products and political agendas by automatically generating mass amounts of tweets through imitating human communication. World leaders and their diplomats have taken note of Twitter’s rapid expansion and have been increasingly utilizing Twitter diplomacy. Television programs use it to amplify their programs.
It could become the emergency communication system for track epidemics or sensor for automatic response to natural disasters.
Amazon:
The largest Internet retailer in the world. The company is now worth more than $560 billion. Electronic commerce and cloud computing company.
Amazon announced that it would acquire Whole Foods, a high-end supermarket chain with over 400 stores, for $13.4 billion.
eBay Inc: (PayPal)
There are now literally millions of items bought and sold every day on eBay, all over the world. For every $100 spent online worldwide, it is estimated that $14 is spent on eBay. What’s more, eBay doesn’t care who you are, where you live, or what you look like:
The race is on to control mobile payments and the upside remains enormous:
Apple:(Shazam – Emagic- Siri – Beats Electronics – Next Inc.- Novauris-PrimeSense -The Bottom Line – Invest in Yourself.)
Quarterly revenue of $52.6 billion 2017.
Today, Apple leads the world in innovation with iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch and Apple TV. Apple’s four software platforms — iOS, macOS, watchOS and tvOS.
Facebook:(Whats App and Instagram Oculus VR.)
A publicly traded company worth more than $500 billion.
More than two billion monthly users. It is developing a new social platform in virtual reality called Facebook Spaces, which it believes will form the foundation for the future of communication.
Tencent and Alibaba: aren’t far from the half-trillion dollar mark either.
These are the main contenders as we know them to-day
—————————————————————————————
So the Question is:
Which one if any of the above will be the top dog by 2025.
Will it be : ( All knowledge, All Gossip, All purchases, All Apps/ Software)
At this point you will have noticed that I have left out the company mentioned in Title of this posting.
While in the future devices may be more ubiquitous in all corners
of the globe, inequality will therefore remain in terms of the services
available in certain locations and the lack of attention paid to the needs
and desires of certain populations.
Companies like Amazon and Google will be fighting to lock you into one voice ecosystem. You may have to declare your allegiance for Alexa, Siri, Cortana or Google Assistant.
One could say that:
Amazon represents de-socialising of commerce. Face book represents self ego. Twitter represents myths and gossip. Apple represents profit. E bay represents selling and buying of stuff, Google represents doming down.
All are represented on Social Media which is being used in ways that shape politics, business, world culture, education, careers, innovation, and more.
Social media applications such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube have increasingly been adopted by politicians, political activists and social movements as a means to engage, organize and communicate with citizens.
So is the power and the winner going to be Social Media which is owned by the Internet.
I think Not.
In short, one consequence of this prediction is that the very idea of ‘social media’ might gradually disappear; instead we simply have an increasingly diverse set of media and increasingly sophisticated exploitation of the possibilities these media have created, including other trends such as obtaining information, sharing information or making communication more visual.
Social media is slowly killing real activism and replacing it with ‘slacktivism, and we all know where that might lead us. Awareness is not translating into real change. Support is limited to pressing the ‘Like’ button or sharing content which absolve them from responsibility to act.
The role of social media as symbolic of the future may already be in decline.
“The election of Donald J. Trump is perhaps the starkest illustration yet that across the planet, social networks are helping to fundamentally rewire human society.”
The one I left out, with 65% of all online searches – is Google.
Google has expanded far beyond its original claim to fame as a search engine.
Google and their competitor platforms are programming the world for profit. The reach of this technology giant is so vast it is hard to imagine an area of modern life it has not touched.
Alphabet owns Google, as well as many other companies. However, Google itself owns companies.
Google has reorganized itself into multiple companies, separating its core Internet business from several of its most ambitious projects while continuing to run all of these operations under a new umbrella company called Alphabet.
Google owns more than 200 companies, including those involved in robotics, mapping, video broadcasting, telecommunications and advertising.
Simply put, the company has been visionary in recognizing the income potential for information products.
Their profit seeking algorithms ensuring that every recommendation, from whether you should buy this or that, stay here or there, fly or drive, connect to this or that, live or die, will earn them a few cents.
By 2025 all will be connected to the Cloud. With one winner.
The Google Monopoly.
Once a Google client always a Google client.
How do you stop using Google?
Already impossible.
Move and your G Mail becomes blocked mail.
Say anything on you website that smacks about google, you site gets flooded with google ads.
It is becoming more and more difficult for anyone to extricate themselves from the clutches of any of its platforms as deactivating means little or nothing.
Social media apps ensure you are still engaged and if they don’t work your friends and family smartphones are searching for you nonstop supplying little hits of dopamine. ( Someone likes you photo or you are mentioned in their contact. It’s a social validation feedback loop..exploiting a vulnerability in humans psychology.)
Will Social Media destroy or rain back Google dominance?
The whole Social media thing is turning into an addictive cancer effecting our brains and tearing our emotions and attentiveness a sunder which in turn is encouraging self-segregation and exacerbating social divides.
Every facet of our life is touched or being integrated by the social media today.
In this sense social media has become an instrument of democratic renewal.
On the other hand it is evident that this uncensored and unmonitored medium of communication is exposing us all to a gradual breakdown of social cohesion and the destruction of our traditional value systems.
Though the advantages of social media are emphasized quite often, as opposed to its negative aspects which are very rarely discussed.
I feel that this will change in the coming years.
All said, social media is here to stay. The power of social media is exponential. Numbers tell the story.
Just as difficult as forecasting the future is knowing the present.
After all not everything moves over time to become more functional
or efficient.
It is obviously going to be hard to predict the future for something as
dynamic as social media. How can we know what social media has already become for oil workers in Alaska, tribal people in Amazonia and the nouveau riche of Moscow?
Unless we take responsibility to ensure that our understanding of social media and its impacts are constantly evaluated with what’s happening in the world. Once we appreciate that knowing social media is not an exercise in delineating the properties of a set of platforms, but rather of acknowledging what the world has already turned these into, by way of content, the immensity of the problem is revealed.
So it will be important to continue monitoring and exploring the extent to which collective action is individualised through social media use.
= Can the use of social media for campaigning help to bring about genuine and lasting empowerment; or does it serve largely to re-inforce pre-existing relationships?
= Is social media a means of building dialogue and consensus in diverse communities or does its use encourage increased fragmentation or, alternatively, a homogeneity of interests?
= Can meaningful impact measures be developed that can be used by small, under-resourced organisations at local level (or indeed within larger voluntary organisations)?
Social media is seen in much of the literature as a means of promoting dialogue beyond the mainstream media. Voluntary and community groups have been criticized, however, for using social media as little more than a means of broadcasting.
Why might this be the case – and does it matter?
Social media expands our capacity but, it does not change our
essential humanity.
It is used to repair the rupture sustained by separated transnational families or for overcoming previously frustrated desires to share photographs more easily.
It allows couples living in different countries who ‘sort of’ live together online;
Soon, however, things move on to new realms.
Should a clear relationship be expected between the (apparently empowering) use of social media in mobilizing large national and global movements, and its use at the micro-political neighborhood level.
An increasing number of social media platforms can be aligned with the diversity of the social groups to which we might want to relate.
Social media however has little impact on the overall outcomes in terms of empowerment, equalities or social justice.
However powerful and important the advent of social media has become, it would be hard to place it ahead of the impact and significance of smartphones, within which social media platforms may often be seen as just another kind of app.
It is smartphones that facilitate social media’s importance as a mix of polymedia, making clear the range of media possibilities as they lie side by side within one easily accessible device.
It is the Smartphone that drives social media input and out put.
Will that will be the One Winner, changing our sense of collective memory, creating a new form or combination of internal and external faculties for retaining information.
As Smartphones become smarter, they may well accelerate the dissolving of social media into this wider array of communicative possibilities.
The increasing ubiquity of the smart phone is the catalyst for more general usage of social media. Recognizing that this may not necessarily impact on any other aspect of inequality should not prevent us from recognizing that there is in one aspect an increasing and significant equality:
The more individuals live within culturally imposed constraints on communication, the more a new technology may mean that what was previously forbidden now becomes possible.
This fluid mix of communicative forms suits the way users flow between activities such as talking, gaming, texting, masturbating, learning and purchasing. The social connection is more important than how well a platform meets their needs.
Comparative anthropology creates particular varieties of knowledge of both breadth and depth. What makes these essential within the context of our complex modern world, however, is that these are forms of understanding based on empathy.
Merely having a smart phone provides a significant change with respect to the capacities of its owner.
——
What happens to our online materials at death.
Finally: Capitalism can never be ethical.
There are no laws requiring Google to be fair.
If we don’t open our eyes soon technology ( whether it’s Google, Twitter, Facebook, Amazon Inc or some equivalent service) is going to F—k us all from some Cloud or other that is just over the horizon.
Just look at the annual release of new smartphones.
Of course there are other things in the long tall grass waiting to caught us by the short and hairy and most have being around for yonks. War, Natural Disasters, Greed, Inequality and the like.
My advice is to beware of the man with a smartphone. Because knowledge is not knowledge until someone else knows that one knows.
Google it.
All human comments much appreciated. All like clicks chucked in the bin.
We all urgently need to consider the implications of allowing commercial interests and governments to use algorithms to analyse our habits: Not because they are becoming all-powerful, that might turn into a source of repression, but because they are exploiting us all for profit.
They make decisions about us and on our behalf.
They are now integrated into our lives. We’re already halfway towards a world where algorithms run nearly everything. As their power intensifies, wealth will concentrate towards them. They will ensure the 1 per cent-99 per cent divide gets larger.
If you’re not part of the class attached to algorithms, then you will struggle.
On the one hand, they are good because they free up our time and do mundane processes on our behalf, but the problem is that when we outsource thinking to machines we are really outsourcing thinking to the organizations that run the machines.
At the moment ignoring the fact that they are driving the cost of living up it is not about algorithms per se, but about the way society is structured with regard to data use and data privacy.
As technology evolves, everything is going up in price.
Raw materiel’s are going up leap and bounds because of a dictatorship of data, that is concentrating on how to generate the most profit.
As profit seeking algorithms power intensifies, wealth will concentrate towards them.
They do so not out of the goodness of their little algorithmic hearts, but rather because they earn a “fee” for this service.
There are many different types of algorithms at play, with different intentions and impacts, however there is one thing that is becoming quite clear day by day that they are driving the human market makers out of business by being smarter and faster.
They are upending the nature of business, how government works and the way we live, from healthcare to education.
We should not allow ourselves to become so reliant on them – and who, if anyone, is policing their use. It’s impossible to do this perfectly. How are they being used to access and interpret “our” data? And by whom?
It won’t be long before big data denies us a bank loan or considers us unfit for a surgical operation, but we can’t learn the explicit reasons because the variables that went in programming them were so myriad and complex?
There is currently an awkward marriage between data and algorithms.
Big data is even change how we think about the world and our place in it. (Penalizing people based on what they are predicted to do, not what the have done.)
Taken in the widest sense, algorithms OWNED BY MONOPOLIES are now responsible for the vast majority of activity on modern stock markets.
The well-being of our pensions, shareholdings, savings etc – are now largely determined by algorithmic vagaries.
Retail algorithms don’t scare me as we still have free will. However Algorithms are increasingly determining our collective futures.
Wherever we use computers, we rely on algorithms: With so much data around, and the ability to process it, big data is the bedrock of new companies profit.
Can we regulate them? I think not.
If you were leader of your country, what would you do?
I would have, Science, technology and inclusive innovation through education, on the national agenda. Education free and equal for all.
Unfortunately this will not happen. Even if it did Profit seeking Algorithms will still be exploiting every weakness.
There is only one defense.
WE MUST RE NATIONALIZE OUR SOCIAL SERVICES, SO ALL BENEFIT NOT JUST THE FEW. Nationalize what is important, Health, Power, Water, Education.
The key outcome of nationalization is the redirection of revenues to the country’s government instead of private operators who may export funds with no benefit to the host country.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks chucked in the bin.
It would be fair to say that most of us live in a cloud of our own importance.
However that cloud is disappearing into any other cloud which we are all creating with little or no control.
Our Ideology of normative beliefs, conscious and unconscious ideas, that are individual, group or society are under attack by this cloud. The reality is that temporary outages and slower-speed broadband that are a minor nuisance today can and will become a critical issue.
It represents the consummate disruptor to structure; a pervasive social and economic network that will soon connect and define more of the world than any other political, social, or economic.
It is the first mega trend of the twenty-first century, one that will shape the way we will address virtually every challenge we face for at least the next 100 years.
It is where we will all live, work, and play in the coming decades.
The Cloud is where your kids go to dive into online play. It’s where you meet and make friends in social networks. It’s where companies find the next big idea. It’s where political campaigns are won and lost.
You might think that this is all hog wash.
( But it appears that New Zealand does not have any politicians with brains of their own that they can rely on.
It has just recently appointed the worlds first AI virtual politician with the wonderful name of SAM. “Sam your man ” with a memory of an elephant he never forgets. ” Sam considers everyone’s position when making decisions.”
Well F… me Nick Gerristen ( The creator of Sam) there is a lot of bias in the cloud and AI algorithms are riddled with it.
You say “SAM is an enabler.” I agree. Make sure you feed it as no doubt Google will want to buy it. I see you love BIG ideas, so perhaps you should introduce Sam to Sophia and you might have a bunch of little Samson’s.
Make sure he knows all about NXT Fuels, and by all means give him a bash. I am sure the Maori would be delighted. By the way, being a politician I would have named it, Ākina. ( A Māori word meaning a call for bold action. It also conveys a spirit of watchful and active encouragement, helping others to identify pathways through their challenges.)
Back to the more serious subject:
It is time that we started to recognize some of the risks associated with this cloud technology, so as to avoid the possibility of future issues being decided by Sam and his like, who are servants of the hardware and software resources made available on the Internet as managed third-party services.
The world and us who live on it are becoming highly dependent on our Internet providers, so much so that it wont be long before we will have a fully cloud-based world.
Since no proper standards for cloud computing are set yet, it becomes almost impossible for anyone to ascertain the quality of services they have been provided with. So in the near future we will not be able to make wise decisions while choosing your personal service provider.
This, in turn, enables providers to charge customers fees proportional to their network, storage, and processing utilization.
Most issues start from the fact that the user loses control of his or her data, because it is stored on a computer belonging to someone else.
Many cloud providers can share information with third parties if necessary for purposes of law and order even without a warrant.
Although cloud computing enhances content accessibility, this access is “increasingly grounded in the virtually monopolistic privatization of the cloud which provides this access”.
This access, necessarily mediated through a handful of companies, ensures a progressive privatization of global cyberspace.
So we must ask the question why are we and our governments sustaining the quasi-monopolies that filter what we see depending on commercial and ideological interests they have.
The legal and regulatory landscape around cloud computing is by no means static. There are new laws being proposed that could change the responsibilities of both cloud computing tenants and providers.This creates new challenges in understanding how laws apply to a wide variety of information management scenarios.
As with all things surrounding profit it’s inevitable that some could will burst or simply stop providing the service if they deem it isn’t profitable for them. Often, large companies will enter the market but leave it once the expected profit doesn’t materialize. If this is the core business of the cloud supplier, it might be willing to continue operating for longer with a smaller profit.
Surely if we use a cloud infrastructure sourced from a cloud services provider, we must impose all legal or regulatory requirements that apply to any enterprise.
THIS WITH SELF LEARNING ALGORITHMS IS NOT POSSIBLE.
THERE IS ONLY ONE WAY OF ACHIEVING ANY CONTROL:
All technology must be vetted to ensure it complies to humanity core values.
It should be compulsory for it to carry a ATR World Certificate.
Accountable, Transparent, Reversible.
If we are to have any hope of tackling any of Social, Political, Economic and Environmental Issues That Affect Us we need a beanie Cloud not a cloud for profit.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks chucked in the bin.
The consequences of Profit seeking AI’s that are trying to emulate human intelligence without a conscious mind to give them any moral value, are going to be tragic for a world that is unable to unite to fight inequality, not to mention Climate Change.
As we don’t know our inherent objectives WITH AI we are playing with dynamite.
Even if every one of us was gets a perfect AI Assistance we will not be able to share its benefits, because AI will lie to us to please us.
We are already witnessing this with Facebook and Twitter on social media promoting false images and gossip that is distorting what is true.
If you were expecting some kind of warning when computers finally get smarter than us, then think again. There will be no soothing HAL 9000-type voice informing us that our human services are now surplus to requirements.
In reality, our electronic overlords are already taking control, and they are doing it in a far more subtle way than science fiction would have us believe.
Their weapon of choice – the algorithm and one has just been granted citizenship of Saudi Arabia.
It attracted international headlines — and sparked an outcry against a country with a shoddy human rights record that has been accused of making women second-class citizens.
A robot simulation of a woman not wearing a headscarf enjoys freedoms that flesh-and-blood women in Saudi Arabia do not.
Where was her male guardian, as required by Saudi law for women.
Perhaps Saudi woman should become robots.
Saudi Arabia doesn’t grant citizenship to the foreign workers who make up a third of its population, not even families that have been in the country for generations. Children of Saudi women who are married to foreign men cannot receive citizenship. Sophia the Algorithm was manufactured in Hong Kong.
One thing’s for sure: As AI grows more advanced its invisible Algorithms arms are already taking control of decision-making.
They might well be running gigantic warehouses, matching kidney donors with recipients, running Heathrow traffic control, but this is only the start.
The smart machine era will be liberating in ways we can not imagine to-day, but at what cost.
There is fine line, between “good” and “bad” algorithms.
The point is that we need to start thinking seriously about algorithms.
Right now there are people coming up with new algorithms by applying evolutionary techniques to the vast amounts of big data via genetic programming to find optimizations and improvement in different fields.
They are not just for mathematicians or academics they are all around us and you don’t need to know how to code to use them or understand them, in fact without them most of the modern world would not work.
However we are looking at an area that is total unregulated where all algorithm activities to make profit are outside any of our current laws.
The rise of Big Data and algorithms known as machine learning algorithms are trawling vast collections of data which will allow for vast numbers of decisions to be automated with no recourse. AI for the sake of AI’s.
The market will be more than trillions by 2026.
Big data by itself it is not trans-formative. Data is inherently dumb. It doesn’t do anything unless you know how to use it and act with it.
There are very few of us know how to do so.
One way or the other it is going to be a multi-trillion feast for those how do.
Algorithms or artificial intelligence will be more efficient, less expensive, and – if well-designed – more accurate than humans.
Algorithm is where the real value lies. Algorithms define action. It is these invisible computations that increasingly control how we interact with our electronic world.
Algorithms may be cleverer than humans but they don’t necessarily have our sense of perspective – As algorithms spread their influence beyond machines to shape the raw landscape around them, it might be time to work out exactly how much they know and whether we still have time to tame them.
Wall Street today, is mostly governed by high frequency trading algorithms and Business is following.
Now, researchers are working on the next generation of these learning algorithms, which are heavily used in machine learning and artificial intelligence and may become the foundation that critical technological advances are built on.
Basically, even though most people haven’t even heard of deep-learning algorithms, better ones could mean a future that includes smarter homes, and robots that care for parents and walk our dogs.
Deep-learning algorithms also will be used with our smart appliances, smart cars and wearable technology — stringing it all together in the much championed Internet of Things.
So what? In the digital world anything goes.
Streaming App Algorithms are increasingly wielding an outsize influence on our lives, influencing politics and the economy.
We have all become so complacent that we don’t care what technology (In the form of Algorithms that are driven by machine learning ) is doing to our lives, irrelevant of the consequence we all becoming dumber and dumber with platforms deciding what we see and what we don’t see.
We have become indifferent to the commercial use of our personal data in return for free services.
Every day supplying through our smart phones more and more data it wont be long before the online world will be more important than the real world.
Before the Algorithm the way we live our lives is often not solely determined by us, but by others. Others decided if we will be hired, will receive loans, are admitted to university or have committed a crime. Traditionally, “the others” have been humans: employers, bank managers, university board members or judges – who we expect to make fair decisions.
This no longer applies.
Algorithms are increasingly part of our everyday lives, from recommending our films to filtering our news and finding our partners, deciding our futures.
We need to better understand them and control, our own futures.
Algorithms and AI are the future, but we must not allow them to become a shield for injustice.
The amount of data we have available to us now means that we can no longer think in discrete terms.
This is what big data forces us to do. It forces us to take a step back, an abstract step back to find a way to cope with the tidal wave of data flooding our systems.
But is this any longer possible?
“Learner algorithms” can be used to create new algorithms which in turn can write the code we need, “with machine learning, computers write their own programs, so we don’t have to.”
Here lies the Catch 22 question.
Virtual data centers through cloud providers are analyzing our every move for profit. Selling the data to Hedge funds investment firms driven by vision algorithms that analyzing satellite images, and geolocation, websites.
If we don’t open or eyes they will govern the cost of everything from food to energy.
There have been other periods in human civilization where we have been overwhelmed by data. Like the Phone represented a discrete means to communicate information. A book, on the other hand, is an abstract means of communication in that there is no direct interaction between writer and reader.
So why are Algorithms different?
Because we will have Algorithms for the sake of algorithms.
So what are Algorithms?
They are sequence of steps that describes an idea for solving a problem meeting the criteria of correctness and terminability. An abstract recipe for the calculation independent of implementation. Another words: Algorithms are a finite number of calculations or instructions that, when implemented, will yield a result.
While Code/ Programming is a set of instructions for a computer. A concrete implementation of the calculation on a specific platform in a specific programming language.
Algorithms have been around for much longer than the invention of coding.
Algorithms are already started to show their potential to create a new era of abstraction by going a step further. Not only will they search for a patterns but they will also create the code we need to do this.
Algorithms enable us to find patterns via clustering, classification, machine learning and any other number of new techniques underpinned, not by code, but by algorithms.
Like: With algorithms tracking Tweets or Facebook the Cloud will be Metropolis of 21st century.
If we can feed them a lifetime’s worth of videos. We might see some significant improvements that would get us closer to using predictive-vision in real-world situations.”
To achieve this we need to better understand how these algorithms work and how to tailor them to suit our needs. Otherwise we will be unable to fully unlock the potential of this abstract transition.
And if all of the above is not scary enough there will be war AI neural networks to decide whether a person is deemed expendable or not.
Artificial intelligence does not have to be a horror story of course if we take steps to Registrar all Algorithms. (See previous posts)
It is imperative that all Algorithms are Provable beneficial to all of us, not to one objective profit.
If we lose our autonomy to AI/ Algorithms machines we end up as the three monkeys – see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.
We are addicted to Technology. These Algorithms that have profit as their targets will ensure that we remain so.
Retail algorithms don’t scare me, I find it annoying when Amazon tells me what I might like.
Now is the time to make your voice count.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks chucked in the bin.
There is no denying that the benefits of technology are needed but what are the downsides costs.
As the demand for up-to-date technology increases, we need to reevaluate how we measure the hidden cost of the TECHNOLOGICAL REVOLUTION.
It will not be us picking up the tap, but the yet to be born that will have to pay, living in a world that is detached from what makes it all possible The Earth.
Technology is now deeply embedded within society, so not planning for the future of technology is by far one of the most costly mistakes we will ever make, in more ways than one.
At this point it is impossible to say with any authority what exactly the cost will be.
Some technologies are unfolding now; others will take a decade or more to develop, but you should know about all of them right now. In the not-too-distant future, we will be able to print human organs, but not the brain.
According to Stephen Hawking, “Humans are entering a stage of self-designed evolution.”
That may be so, but technology is more than just fusing the physical and digital worlds.
Marked by emerging technology breakthroughs in a number of fields, including robotics, artificial intelligence, nanotechnology, quantum computing, biotechnology, the Internet of Things, 3D printing, autonomous vehicles, face and voice recognition and algorithms learning from other algorithms.
With wireless connecting brain-reading technology directly to electrical stimulators on your body it has the potential with more items moving from physical to virtual to decouple us from reality. Wireless communications is already dominating our everyday lives
It is already impacting all disciplines, economies, and industries, our politics, improving medicine, influencing our culture.
Apart from the obvious technology is also in the process of changing democracy, moving capitalism underground, assisting conflicts, packaging natural resources, destabilizing society, disrupt the way governments deliver services to citizens, just to mention the tip of the ice berg.
.It will not be long before we will all have DNA maps from birth.
However with the arrival of Quantum computers the way we use technology will be reshape, along with the societies we live in.
As soon as two to five years from now, such systems or time on such systems are likely to be for sale.
There are probably plenty more uses for quantum computers that nobody has thought up yet.
However you may rest assured that the ordinary citizens (or even governments) won’t be able to own their own quantum computers for a long time, if ever, but I can imagine large companies renting time (measured in fractions of seconds) to whoever needs their services.
With this in mind the race has well started to create monopolies of knowledge Google, of Social Media Society – Facebook, consumerism E Bay, Amazon, Alibaba, of Finance – Pay Pal, of Communication – Apple, of Biotech Thermo Fisher Scientific, of cloud business – Microsoft -IBM, Oracle, of computer microchips to data center-makers-Intel, to name just a few.
Here are a few of their Mission statements:
Facebook: “To give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected.”
Amazon: “To be Earth’s most customer-centric company, where customers can find and discover anything they might want to buy online, and endeavors to offer its customers the lowest possible prices.”
Pay Pal: “To build the Web’s most convenient, secure, cost-effective payment solution.”
Alibaba: “To make it easy to do business anywhere.”
Google: “To organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.”
Microsoft: “To enable people and businesses throughout the world to realize their full potential.”
United Nations: “The maintenance of international peace and security.”
Medecins Sans Frontieres: “To help people worldwide where the need is greatest, delivering emergency medical aid to people affected by conflict, epidemics, disasters or exclusion from health care.”
Non mention the health of the EARTH?
Disruptive technology is, by its very nature, unpredictable but we’ll see more intelligence built into communication. With always-on connectivity, social networking has the power to change cultures, as we saw with the Egyptian Revolution, which led to the Arab Spring.
The results of changing the world are often complicated and unpredictable.
With the technology of smart phones social influences will continue to move rapidly between cultures.
In the broadest sense, technology extends our abilities to change the world: to cut, shape, or put together materials; to move things from one place to another; to reach farther with our hands, voices, and senses. We use technology to try to change the world to suit us better. The changes may relate to survival needs such as food, shelter, or defense, or they may relate to human aspirations such as knowledge, art, or control.
As computational power rises exponentially, not linearly, so does the rate of change — and that means the next 10 years should pack in far more technological change than the last 10.
It is my prediction that all of it will end up in the cloud.
Why?
Because it is the dumb, novelty-seeking portion of our brains (driving the limbic system that induces this feeling of pleasure, not the planning, scheduling, higher-level thought centers in the prefrontal cortex) that is driving technology to tap into our personal sensors.
Make no mistake: emails, Facebook and Twitter-checking constitute a neural addiction.
Already, the cloud is powerful enough to help us communicate through real-time language translation.
When is a profit not a profit? When it turns into a monopoly exploiting all around it.
Just like Capitalism technology it is unable to regulate itself and with the arrival of Quantum computers it will make everything and everybody beholden to technology, endangering much of the openness that we now enjoy online.
So I one again ask the question:
Is it time to regulate Algorithms that have profit as their end targets and is it time that we demanded an open data website that would allow anyone to find information on a host of county government programs, from budget information to welfare data to crime statistics.
This would be linked to two powerful benefits.
First, it makes government more transparent and understandable at a time when trust in the public sector has plummeted.
Second, it has the potential to generate significant economic benefits impacting budget issues, public safety and education, transparency and economic value for tax payers money.
The bottom line is that government data can be extremely valuable for public consumption, but only if the policies behind the data are well thought out and the related costs are affordable. For instance, would a map of society reveal awkward disparities in how rich and poor neighborhoods receive public funding?
Many governments are running on old, outdated systems, making them vulnerable to cyber attacks.
I believe that such an open based data website would benefit from the collective wisdom of the community, simplify how citizens and businesses interact with the state.
However IT WOULD HAVE THE unexpected startup costs if data is kept in a legacy computer system that requires reformatting; quality-related costs to keep open data fresh and up-to-date; legal costs to comply with open data legislation; liability costs in case something goes wrong, such as publication of nonpublic information; and public relations costs that can occur when a jurisdiction generates bad press from open data about poor performance metrics or workforce diversity problems.
That apart present technological advances and information overlays will change how we live in significant ways.
We will have a so-called “smart grid” where all of our appliances are linked directly to energy distribution systems, allowing for real-time pricing based on supply and demand. Such a universal method for identifying someone energy requirements becomes much harder when you no longer have a central authority to figure out how to link together the different systems.
It will not be like self-driving trucks with lidar system guidance run by algorithms or self-driving cars.
Who is responsible when the self drive truck or car kills someone. Try bringing a self thought Algorithm to court.
Try suing an Face-detecting systems for wrong identification or payment.
Then we have: Gene-therapy.
Biology’s next mega-project will find out what we’re really made of.
Three technologies are coming together to make this new type of mapping possible.
The first is known as “cellular microfluidics.” Individual cells are separated, tagged with tiny beads, and manipulated in droplets of oil that are shunted like cars down the narrow, one-way streets of artificial capillaries etched into a tiny chip, so they can be corralled, cracked open, and studied one by one.
The second is the ability to identify the genes active in single cells by decoding them in superfast and efficient sequencing machines at a cost of just a few cents per cell. One scientist can now process 10,000 cells in a single day.
The third technology uses novel labeling and staining techniques that can locate each type of cell—on the basis of its gene activity—at a specific zip code in a human organ or tissue.
Then we have, the relentless push to add connectivity to home gadgets is creating dangerous side effects that figure to get even worse.
Then we have, Botnets are used to commit click fraud.
Google ads pay a site owner according to the number of people who click on them. The attacker instructs all the computers on his botnet to repeatedly visit the Web page and click on the ad. Dot, dot, dot, PROFIT! If the botnet makers figure out more effective ways to siphon revenue from big companies online, we could see the whole advertising model of the Internet crumble.
Then we have, hackers breaking into computers over the Internet and controlling them en masse from centralized systems. The problem is getting worse, thanks to a flood of cheap webcams, digital video recorders, and other gadgets in the “Internet of things.”
Then we have, reinforcement learning. Reinforcement learning may soon inject greater intelligence into much more than games.
SO WHAT NOW?
What are the implications to human development and the diversity of life on earth? What opportunities are there to reduce risks and vulnerabilities, enhance resilience, and create transformations to prosperous and equitable futures?
Science can provide only some answers; it is not a panacea for all problems. We need to also make personal, economic, social, and political changes, whatever the cost will be.
Reinforcement-learning algorithm can learn from collated data and experiment in simulation to suggest, say, how and when to operate the cooling systems.
Algorithms don’t know the Meaning of Environment.
They have however so concept of the “The term ‘environment’ it refers to all external conditions and factors that affect living organisms. Here external factors mean all the things around us such as air, water, light, animals, humans etc.
Algorithms are shadow boxers of yesterday all because technology trends can affect the bottom line of business.
Although big data algorithms hold great promise, they should still be approached with caution and skepticism.
For instance Algorithms should not be relied upon to ration medical care until the technology has substantially matured.
If we ignore what is happening there will be more riots, and increasing divisions along economic, religious and ethnic lines with Robots completely replacing humans in the workforce.
IT IS TIME FOR THE OWNERS ALL PROFIT SEEKING ALGORITHMS TO BE REGISTERED WITH A COPY OF THE WORKING CODE. NO PROFIT EARNING ALGORITHMS SHOULD BE GRANTED A PATIENT.
All human comments appreciated all like clicks chucked in the bin.
I have addressed this subject in several previous posts.
You would think that we should learn from previous regulations, like those on the food, pharmaceutical, automobile etc all typically applied after something bad had happened, not in anticipation.
WHEN IT COMES TO TECHNOLOGIES THAT HAVE THE CAPABILITY TO LEARN FROM THEIR OWN ACTIVITIES, with the – possible of impacting on the full spectrum of benefits and risks to humanity ― from the possible development of a more utopic society to the potential extinction of human civilization.
IT IS IMPERATIVE THAT WE HAVE SOME FORM OF CONTROL.
Without unnecessary constraints on AI researchers and developers, fundamental research fields or technologies should not be regulated.
Aspirational principles alone are not enough, if they are not put into practice, and a question remains: is government regulation and oversight necessary to guarantee that AI scientists and companies follow these principles and others like them?
Even today, we’re seeing signs of narrow AI exacerbating problems of discrimination and job loss, and if we don’t take proper precautions, we can expect problems to worsen, affecting more people as AI grows smarter and more complex.
The recently founded Partnership on AI founding document states that:
“Where AI tools are used to supplement or replace human decision-making, we must be sure that they are safe, trustworthy and aligned with the ethics and preferences of people who are influenced by their actions.”
Because these problems threaten society as a whole, they can’t be left to a small group of researchers to address. At the very least, government officials need to learn about and understand how AI could impact us all.
YOU WOULD WONDER WHY, the topic rarely comes up in political discussion.
Let’s ask ourselves: how can we ensure that AI remains beneficial for all, and who needs to be involved in that effort?
THE PROBLEM IS TO DAY THAT WE DON’T KNOW WHAT TO REGULATE, OR AT WHAT LEVEL WOULD WE DO THIS?
This question to me is pointless.
We will never get enough international support lay the foundations for constructive regulation.
CONTROL SHOULD BE IMPLEMENTED LIKE AN LEGALLY REQUIRED MOT.
EVERY ALGORITHM THAT IS INVASIVE OR PROFIT PRODUCING SHOULD BE REQUIRED BY INTERNATIONAL LAW TO LOGE A COPY ITS SOFTWARE PROGRAM OR PROGRAM’S IN A AI BANK.
WHERE IT IS HELD JUST IN CASE OF MALFUNCTION.
THIS NEEDS TO START- soon to have any chance of keeping up with innovation in the field.
WHY?
Because: Algorithms will dominate the coming centuries.
Because: Ascribing human qualities to non-human entities is a minefield.
Because: Algorithms are becoming the single most important concept in our world.
Because: Algorithms are connected to our emotions.
Because: Algorithms are not just particular calculation, but a method followed when making the calculation.
Because: What we call sensations and emotions are all algorithms.
Because: Electronic Algorithms will out perform biochemical Algorithms.
Because: Humans can no longer cope with the immense flows of data.
Because: Algorithms will completely transform the very nature of life transforming the world beyond recognition.
Because: Free –market capitalism and controlled communism are competing data-processing systems.
Because: The Stock Exchange, the economy of the world is already run by high frequency algorithms for profit only.
Because: Algorithms structures will run hospitals. then your faith will be in the hands of the system. What is true of hospitals will be true of armies, wars, prisons, schools, and corporations.
Because: We will need to decide which is a computer and which is the human.
Because: It follows that external algorithms will know you better than yourself.
I am sure you can add to the list.
Algorithms are decoupling us for shared values, with life becoming just data processing.
If this is the sort of world you want to live in stay silent and your wish will come true.
If you can think it, there’s most likely an algorithm for it.
While computer scientists may not be specifically finding better ways to manage your love life, you’d be surprised at how math can play a role as matchmaker. Let’s keep in mind that, during a search, you reach a point when you’ve gathered enough data and a continued search can be seen as both redundant as well as confirming what you know.
Well, how about when finding a parking space?
All human comments appreciated, all like clicks chucked in the bin of data.
We might not yet be living in a world that is run by Google but the way we are accepting artificial intelligence algorithms we will soon if not already be living in a world run by a Google Algorithm brain.
The complex mathematical formulas of Algorithms are playing a growing role in all walks of life: deciding who gets a job, how police resources are deployed, who gets insurance at what cost, or who is on a ‘no fly’ list.
There decisions are often based on data collected about people, sometimes without their knowledge inferring all sorts of things about you from your digital crumbs.
They are being used – experimentally – to write news articles from raw data, while Donald Trump’s presidential campaign was helped by behavioral marketers who used an algorithm to locate the highest concentrations of ‘persuadable voters.
Completely lacking any form of transparency they are both untraceable, and subject to no form of accountability. They can infer your sexual orientation, your personality traits, your political leanings, with predictive power, with high levels of accuracy.
We’re already halfway towards a world where algorithms run nearly everything.
As their power intensifies, wealth will concentrate towards them.
They will ensure the 1%-99% divide gets larger.
If you’re not part of the class attached to algorithms, then you will struggle.
They will further stratify society, creating a world of haves and have-not’s.
So why are we ‘blindly trusting’ formulas to determine a fair outcome.
The main reason is because most people don’t yet know or understand what they are doing or could be doing.
Algorithms are not inherently fair, because the person who builds the model defines success. This is the reason why there is no popular outrage about Wall Street being run by algorithms.
For techno-evangelists, Google is a marvel of Web brilliance … For Wall Street, it may be the IPO (An IPO is short for an initial public offering. Like the name says, it’s when a company initially offers shares of stocks to the public. It’s also called “going public.” An IPO is the first time the owners of the company give up part of their ownership to stockholders.) that changes everything (again) …
The vast majority of trades these days are performed by algorithms. The idea that the world’s financial markets – and, hence, the well-being of our pensions, shareholdings, savings etc – are now largely determined by algorithmic vagaries is unsettling enough for some.
But in my opinion we should not automatically see algorithms as a malign influence on our lives, we should debate their ubiquity and their wide range of uses.
Why?
Because we now spend so much of our time online that we are creating huge data-mining opportunities.
Because there is the possibility of using big-data predictions about people to judge and punish them even before they’ve acted. Doing this negates ideas of fairness, justice and free will. This presents an entirely new menace: penalties based on propensities.
Because we risk falling victim to a dictatorship of data, whereby we fetishise the information, the output of our analyses, and end up misusing it.
Because by far the most complicated algorithms are to be found in science, where they are used to design new drugs or model the climate.
We all urgently need to consider the implications of allowing commercial interests and governments to use algorithms to analyse our habits:
How are they being used to access and interpret “our” data? And by whom?
Big data is a useful tool of rational decision-making. Wielded unwisely, it can become an instrument of the powerful, who may turn it into a source of repression.
But there is a bigger question about the oversights involving AI.
The questions being raised about algorithms at the moment are not about algorithms per se, but about the way society is structured with regard to data use and data privacy. It’s also about how models are being used to predict the future.
There is currently an awkward marriage between data and algorithms. As technology evolves, there will be mistakes, but it is important to remember they are just a tool. We shouldn’t blame our tools. At the moment there is consensus, that in the next twenty years we will be looking at seeing AI as smart as humans.
Difficulties come when they are used in the social sciences not to mention again financial trading.
Targeted Algorithms can now calculate whether a woman is pregnant and, if so, when she is due to give birth: Teenage daughters can be identified pregnant by retailers long before her own father knows.
From dating websites and City trading floors, through to online retailing and internet searches (Google’s search algorithm is now a more closely guarded commercial secret than the recipe for Coca-Cola), algorithms are increasingly determining our collective futures. “Bank approvals, store cards, job matches and more all run on similar principles.
“The algorithm is the god from the machine powering them all, for good or ill.”
They are now so integrated into our lives we barely notice them.
Pharmacists are already seeing some of their prescribing tasks replaced by algorithms. Data analysis as a factor in deciding whether to release somebody from prison or to keep him incarcerated.”
On the one hand, they are good because they free up our time and do mundane processes on our behalf.
However as their ubiquity spreads, so too does the debate around whether we should allow ourselves to become so reliant on them – and who, if anyone, is policing their use.
Here’s the scary bit:
We will be at the mercy of algorithms. How will they work when they are combined together. The result will be a system that will never be completely understood, that they could fail in unpredictable ways.
We are currently creating AI without fully understanding intelligence or cognition first.
Google released a developer’s kit last spring that lets anyone integrate Google’s search engine into their own application. The download is simple, and the license is free for the taking. The developer’s kit is a classic Trojan-horse strategy, putting Google’s engine in places that the company might not have imagined. Basically, those developers can do whatever they want.
Google doesn’t market itself in the traditional sense. Instead, it observes, and it listens. Their Algorithms will run everything from shopping to gods only knows what in the future. Googlers will be living amid semantic, visual, and technical esoterica.
Google now processes over 40,000 search queries every second on average, which translates to over 3.5 billion searches per day and 1.2 trillion searches per year worldwide A single Google query uses 1,000 computers in 0.2 seconds to retrieve an answer.
In February 2016, Google briefly overtook Apple to become the most valuable company in the world – worth more than $500bn (£350bn).
In 2015 alone, Google had revenues of $75bn (£53bn). That’s about £1,675 a second. Yet its core service – search – costs nothing to use. Simply, everyday in 2016 Google earned a over $58 million (£45m).
Google at the moment controls around 70% of all online searches.
It could and should be viewed as a monopoly, but most of us don’t give a toss as it is already impossible to stop using it.
We are all already essentially sentenced to a digital death out side any laws or regulations.
Innovation at Google is as democratic as the search technology itself. One reason Google puts its innovations on public display is to identify failures quickly. Another reason is to find winners.
We will all have a Google Assistant connected to the Cloud.
The question is: Will they be accountable to us or Google.
Will it make our lives better or improve its quality?
Not so as technologies have little to do with human thought or indeed intelligence.
GOOGLE RATTLES THE TECH WORLD WITH A NEW AI CHIP FOR ALL.
Google says it will not sell the chip directly to others. Instead, through its new cloud service, set to arrive sometime before the end of the year, any business or developer can build and operate software via the internet that taps into hundreds and perhaps thousands of these processors, all packed into Google data centers more recently, it has worked to sell time on this hardware via the cloud—massive computing power anyone can use to build and operate websites, apps, and other software online.
Unlike the original TPU, it can be used to train neural networks, not just run them once they’re trained. Also setting the new chip apart: it’s available through a dedicated cloud service.
Several companies, including chip giant Intel and a long list of startups, are now developing dedicated AI chips that could provide alternatives to the Google TPU.
Why? Because, this is the good side of capitalism which is in the process of disappearing into the cloud.
Most of Google’s revenue still comes from advertising, however IN A MOVE that could shift the course of multiple technology markets, Google will soon launch a cloud computing service that provides exclusive access to a new kind of artificial-intelligence chip designed by its own engineers.
The company sees cloud computing as another major source of revenue that will carry a large part of its future: deep neural networks—machine learning systems behind the rapid evolution of everything from image and speech recognition to automated translation to robotics.
Algorithms will still need a human to collect blood and urine samples for them to analyse. Even the best data scientists would struggle to know what to do with all that data. But it’s the next step that we need to keep an eye on. They could really screw up someone’s life with a false prediction about what they might be up to.
The European Union’s data protection law, set from next year to create a ‘right of explanation’ when consumers are impacted by an algorithmic decision, as a model that could be expanded but in practices algorithms will be made the scapegoat for societal ills. Absolving Humanity.
The protection law or laws will be Unworkable.
With most of us not realizing that there is a race before AI becomes conscious and self-aware, AI is here to stay, luckily there is more to mere intelligence than a chip or implant can explain.
The danger is that Super Artificial Intelligence will con us into to thinking that it is consciousness without being conscious. We could be using brain-computer interfaces to link us to the cloud and there will be no clear moment when we emerge as trans human whether we like it or not. If the world takes the shape of whatever the most powerful AI is programmed (or reprograms itself) to desire it opens the possibility of evolution taking a turn for the entirely banal.
Should we now be regulating AI.
The problem is how the rules are set: it’s impossible to do this perfectly.
Without a doubt and it should not be left to a small group or self-regulation.
We should now set up an new world organisation that is totally transparent and self financing to vet all AI. This organisation should not only vet AI it should establish a virtual bank where all programs are stored.
Diversity has a value all in itself but when you look at humanity as a whole there is a lot wrong.
We at the start of a major technology revolution with AI no longer a far-fetched fiction.
Fortunately we do not have to justify our existence as yet.
Saying that we want to save this precious puny planet and doing it successfully is still a long way off. If we don’t find a way of distributing the earth wealth we will end up fueling capitalism with Artificial Intelligence that serves only the few not the many.
There are people searching the Web for ‘spiritual enlightenment and so they should as the needle of our beliefs will continue to swerve away from the universality of God.
When someone enters a query on Google for “spiritual enlightenment,” it’s not clear what he’s seeking. The concept of spiritual enlightenment means something different from what the two words mean individually. Google has to navigate varying levels of literary to guess at what the user really wants.
At some point, all of this great stuff has to turn a profit by Google.
What we have at present, academic inquiry devoted primarily to acquiring knowledge and technological know-how dissociated from any intellectually more fundamental concern to help us resolve our conflicts and problems of living in more cooperatively rational ways – dissociated, that is, from the pursuit of wisdom – is a recipe for disaster.
It is hardly too much to say that all our current global problems have come about because of the successful scientific pursuit of knowledge and technological know-how dissociated from wisdom.
The appalling destructiveness of modern warfare and terrorism, vast inequalities in wealth and standards of living between first and third worlds, rapid population growth, environmental damage – destruction of tropical rain forests, rapid extinction of species, global warming, pollution of sea, earth and air, depletion of finite natural resources – all exist today because of the massively enhanced power to act (of some), made possible by modern science and technology.
Every branch and aspect of academic inquiry need to change if we are to have the kind of inquiry, both more rational and of greater human value than what we have at present, that we really need.
All comments appreciated, all like clicks chucked in the bin.
PS: I did not bother to address the effects that Algorithms will have on our vision, our language, our writing, our necks, our figures, our memory, our brains etc.
To day the Internet is a free and lawless zone that is eroding state sovereignty, ignores borders, abolishing privacy and perhaps posing one of the biggest treats to security on many a front.
A decade ago it hardly registered on the radar.
MIXING GOD LIKE TECHNOLOGY WITH MEGALOMANIAC POLITICS IS A RECIPE FOR DISASTER.
By the time bureaucracy makes up its mind about cyber space regulations, the internet has morphed ten times.
We are now overwhelmed with data. Never before have governments being so well-informed as to what going on but they are unable to implement any change without Social Media, the internet and AI.
As we seem void of ANY STATESMAN Artificial Intelligence in the form of unregulated Algorithms are not only plundering the world of economics ( High Frequency trading) eroding Democracy, which is failing to provide a meaningful visions of the future.
DUE TO ITS DIVORCE FROM CAPITALISM.
Leaving all the important decisions in the hand of the free market give our politicians the perfect excuse for inaction and ignorance, which are reinterpreted as profound wisdom.
So let me ask you.
Do we want a small coterie of billionaires ruining the world for profit.
Fortunately even if we did they would not be able to do so as the system is far too complex. There is no getting away from that the free market only does what is good for the market rather than what is good for mankind or the world.
The hands of the market are now blind and invisible due to Algorithms and left to their own devices with machine learning will – FAIL TO DO ANYTHING ABOUT THE DANGERS OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE OR CLIMATE CHANGE.
With more than 1 billion users worldwide and 2.5 million apps — and counting it has become an instinctual gesture to turn to our smartphones when we are exposed to an unknown environment.
Thanks to the internet and our feature-packed smartphones, we can not only consume and interact with incoming news, we can also be the first ones to communicate things to the rest of the world if we happen to be at the right place, at the right time. And we’re doing this over devices that just two decades ago would’ve looked at home in sci- flicks.
There is no argument that Artificial Intelligence is penetrating our daily live so new structures will be built.
The Question is who will build and control these structures?
A world run be Google, Facebook, Twitter and their like will be a world without imagination, compassion, and moral ethics of any kind other than profit.
If we think in term of decades, then Global Warming, Growing Inequality and Artificial Intelligence linked together will dwarf and overwhelm all other problems or theological developments.
Combined they will overshadow any political gains or profits. Surpassing all tin pot dictators of the world.
We must not allow global data collection to rest in the hands of world monopolies..
Goodbye, cash. Hallow iPhone’s Wallet apps. Just imagine what this is going to do to what is left of society. Consumer growth will be the only evidence of life.
The rise of apps and social media is changing the way many of the world’s two billion Christians and 1.6 billion Muslims worship – and even what it means to be religious.
Facebook said that in its most recent quarter, roughly 84 percent of its $6.82 billion in ad revenue came from mobile ads.
To claim back power we must turn our shiny mirrors our Smartphones into shields, passports and carriers of personal sovereignty and equality. Smart phone are the new guardians of Democracy and we better start using them wisely.
Not all changes brought by the mobile revolution have been positive.
In fact, for certain groups of people from around the world, the explosion of mobile has brought misery and exploitation.
Events in one country now have almost instant implications for the rest of the world. We see footage shot with smartphones in mass-media almost every day now.
It’s now a question of who gets heard, not what is heard.
In my opinion, we are living through a transition period triggered by a dramatic change in mobile networks in the last decade. This transition periods will be painful. But sooner or later things will stabilize and everyday liberties enjoyed by leading Western countries will spread out throughout the world. Surely, the mobile networks are speeding up this process.
From one perspective, the dependence on mobile technology is pathetic, but on the other hand it surely makes it easier for people to explore foreign cultures.
It is highly likely that someday, as more people interact and connect with foreign cultures, borders between countries will start to dissolve and the world will become a united planet. Smartphones and mobile networks will be at the heart of this evolution.
The biggest social networks (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn) and media sharing sites (Instagram, YouTube, Snapchat), along with maybe a handful of others like Pinterest and Google Plus are all a catch-all platforms whose functionality is constantly evolving.
As more networks add rich features like live streaming and augmented reality, the lines between their feature sets continue to blur and change faster than most people have time to read up on the changes.
Look beyond those social media juggernauts and you’ll see that people are using many different types of social media to connect online for all kinds of reasons.
There are anonymous social networks a step back toward the wild-west early days of the internet.
It is the social media sites that are the carbuncle on society’s backside, not smart phones.
We are becoming symbiotic with our computer tools, growing into interconnected systems that remember less by knowing information than by knowing where the information can be found. The always-on lifestyle suggest future generations will have different priorities about what they choose to remember.
Smartphones — and the connection they represent to a global social network — is becoming more than just a device in our pockets but something closer to a digital extension of ourselves.
Apps spawned industries that couldn’t exist without smartphones but smartphones spawned the Arab Spring in the Middle East in early 2011.
The smart phone quickly demonstrated itself as a powerful tool for driving social revolution.
Smartphones helped protesters to quickly share information with observers outside the region, which in turn helped drive political pressure during the revolution.
The potential benefit of taking things to the general public, again made possible by mobile networks and smartphones for all initiative purposes is in its early stage of development.
With joint collaborative efforts their status as an indispensable item in the 21st century
If anyone has a suggestion as how we can get the world of Smartphones to collectively come together as a unite to create a new dynamic network of compassion I am all ears. Smartphones and social media will the last chance for a compassionate world.
It begins with you.
How the social media further impact our life in our society and where do social media and the Internet technology take us in the next few decades is really an interesting question, or perhaps a mystery or a challenge for human themselves.
But one thing should stand is we ought not to be controlled by technology, we control them! If we are not already to late.
Technology is now deeply embedded within society, so not planning for the future of technology is by far one of the most costly mistakes we will ever make, in more ways than one.
